The Friend Zone
by sunflowersusan
Summary: Will and Lou have been best friends since college. Although their lives have gone down different paths since their glory days and they lost touch along the way, they find themselves reuniting fifteen years later. Completely A/U!
1. Chapter 1

**Authors Note: Hi, everyone! This is my first piece in about six years...so please be kind! Also I've placed the characters in a setting that I'm familiar with, which is why they are in the Southern United States. Although the story is heavily A/U, I've tried to stay true to the essence of the characters, especially later in the story. I currently have about twelve chapters written and envision it being around twenty-five. I welcome all (constructive) criticism and hope you guys like it! :)**

"Just don't you give him the wrong idea."

I turned in my seat and fixed Georgiana with an exasperated gaze. "When have I ever given him the wrong idea?"

"Oh, certainly never throughout college."

"We were just friends."

"Only because you always made sure he was firmly in the friend zone," she muttered.

"Everyone knew we were just friends."

"Except him."

"That is not true!" I exclaimed defensively. Georgiana was one of the most argumentative and bullheaded women I knew. She was also my oldest girlfriend, a fact which she assumed meant that she was precluded from my irritation when her contentious trait reared its ugly head. I hadn't even been back in the country for two full days yet but here we were anyway: stuck in Atlanta traffic and snapping at one another.

God. It was good to be back.

"I'm just saying-jerk!" Georgiana honked as a minivan cut her off. "That sometimes you flirt without realizing it."

#####################################################################################################

Thirty minutes later we were finally in pulling into the small parking lot of our favorite grungy pub in Midtown. As we walked into Juniper's, I felt a sense of trepidation settle over me.

 _What were you thinking,_ I asked myself. _Coming here like nothing had changed?_

Georgiana must have sensed my dread, because she quickly threw her arm around my shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze. "It's trivia, Lou. Just like old times."

 _Yeah_ , I thought to myself. _Just like old times_.

I spotted them as soon as we walked in. They were still sitting at that corner booth; the one with the ratty seats and the table that rocked. Rupert was sitting in the middle, pouring over the menu-like it was his first time seeing it-with his girlfriend Alicia. Beside Alicia were two men that I didn't recognize. They were holding hands and engaged in an animated conversation with Freddie. In the back of my head I remembered Georgiana mentioning some of Freddie's coworkers had joined the team too. That must be them.

The lively conversation stopped as soon as we were spotted. When Freddie saw us, his eyes lit up and he jumped to his feet. He opened his arms wide and trapped Georgiana in a giant bear hug, then kissed her firmly on the lips. For as long as I had known them this was the way he acted every time he saw her: as if he were a blind man seeing his entire world for the first time.

Some people search their whole lives for something like that and still arrive at the end empty-handed.

I was empty handed.

With an almost equal amount of enthusiasm, Freddie turned to me and enveloped me in a hug as well. "We've missed you, Lou."

"I've missed you guys too," I replied. Freddie too was one of my oldest friends, and somehow his embrace calmed my unease. As we pulled away from one another, I looked around, feeling a confusing mixture of relief and disappointment. There was someone missing.

"Ah, there she is. Back from all of her great adventures."

The voice came from behind me. It was just as I remembered. Soft and low, husky almost. His voice was like a smooth Kentucky bourbon; and it warmed my core and burned my soul all at the same time. I braced myself as a wave of emotions and memories rushed over me.

I took a deep breath before I turned around. He was here after all.

Will.

He was grinning. The sight of his handsome face and brilliant smile after so long an absence almost knocked me to my knees. He was just like I remembered.

Except...he wasn't.

Although he masked it well, he couldn't hide it completely. Not from me, anyways. The broad grin playing on his lips stopped there. There was no light in his eyes. They looked hollow and empty and tired.

I felt shaken. There was no doubt that the Will Traynor I had once known was different from the man in front of me.

 _You had known he would be, and yet…_ I sighed and let the thought trail off.

My gaze left his face and traveled as I assessed the man that sat in the wheelchair in front of me. It was black and bulky and Will sat it in slightly reclined. His hair had grown out-it almost touched his shoulders now-and was much longer than I could ever remember having seen it in the last fifteen years. There was also stubble on his cheeks, the beginnings of a beard. His arms lay mostly motionless on the armrests, except for his right wrist which lay in the rest of a U-shaped joystick. All things considered, he looked healthy, if not a little pale. But, that could have been attributed to the poor lighting in the pub, or the overcast November skies.

"Oh, it wasn't as glamorous as all that." I rolled my eyes and leaned down to give him a hug. Halfway down, I paused, not sure of the mechanics of hugging a someone in massive wheelchair. "I went to Brussels a few months ago and ended up with measles."

I was still crouched halfway down. Any more hesitation on my part would make the situation even more uncomfortable than it already was.

The subtle but rich scent of musk hit me as I leaned in closer to complete the awkward hug. The smell was so familiar and comforting that it almost hurt. I breathed in deeply, and felt Will's chest shake as he started to chuckle. "Isn't there a vaccination for that?"

I tried to sear the memory of the smell into my nostrils and stood back up. After taking a step back so that he didn't have to crane his neck to look up at me, I grinned sheepishly. "Yeah, apparently they're still working the kinks out of that one."

I couldn't be sure, but from the way he threw his head back in laughter, I think he bought it.

I joined in his laughing, and for a moment it was just like old times. But eventually the laughter ended, and then we lapsed into an uncomfortable silence. Somehow our friends had alienated us and were all involved in deep conversation with one another, effectively ignoring us. No doubt that they thought they were being considerate and letting us privately catch up. After all, Will and I had been the instigators. The original partners in crime. We'd brought these people together. We'd started this Thursday night tradition fifteen years ago. We were the reason everyone was here...so the least they could do was give us some semblance of privacy, right? Because even though it had been so many years, there was no doubt in any of their minds that anything had changed between the two of us.

Yet, here we stood. The years weren't falling away, as people always said they did between old friends, but instead slowly forming like bricks and building an impenetrable wall.

I edged myself onto the edge of the booth beside Freddie. "Will," I started.

He shook his head. "Clark, please don't."

I looked down at my lap.

"You were in a different country," he said after a moment. "A different continent."

"I still should've called or -"

"Yes. You should have," he cut me off. I kept my gaze fixed on a speck of French fry littering the floor. "But then you would have had to pay those outrageous international charges."

He was letting me off the hook. Surprisingly. I couldn't stand it though, because I knew that out of all of his friends, I'd been the only one who hadn't so much as sent a text message when they had found out.

I looked up and our eyes met. His were a rich brown, full of emotions and thoughts that I had never been able to read. I'm not sure what mine reflected-remorse, regret-but Will had always been able to read me like a book. Only a nanosecond later he chuckled and added, "I probably wouldn't have answered your overpriced call anyway. I was too busy being a dick and wallowing in self-pity."

I gave him an incredulous look. "You? Being an insufferable ass? Say it ain't so."

"I know," he laughed. "I managed to push a decent amount of people away, but try as I might, I couldn't get rid of those guys," he nodded in the direction of Freddie and Georgiana and Rupert. "The three of them are like leeches."

I smiled at Will cautiously, hearing the words he wasn't saying underneath the confession: _It's okay. I understand._

He returned it with one of his brightest. This time it extended to his eyes. "Okay. That's enough of that. Now, I want to hear about your adventures. Your favorite building, your favorite city, and how in the hell you would up with measles."

######################################################################################################

Just like it always did, trivia lasted two hours. Our team, The Purple People Eaters, came in second-no thanks to me and Will.

There was just so much to talk about, to catch up on. His life, my life, our parents, our friends and acquaintances. He wanted to hear-in excruciating detail-about the three years that I'd been abroad studying fashion and design. Meanwhile, I wanted to know all the things that I couldn't actually bring myself to ask: would things get worse, and if so, when?

Instead, I learned that he'd started working again last June. He'd started his own small consulting business and operated it from home. Oh, he'd bought a house too. A nice little Queen Anne cottage, picked purely on the architectural style. "Because you always said Queen Anne was your favorite," he told me.

I looked at him sharply.

"The look on your face!" he laughed heartily, but his shoulders barely shook. "I kid. I'm totally kidding."

I huffed at being the butt of his joke. "Queen Anne are my favorite," I mumbled darkly.

"You'll have to come out and see it sometime," he paused and chose his next words carefully. "Maybe this weekend?"

"It's a date!" Georgiana caught my eye from across the table. I thought back to our earlier conversation in the car, and rolled my eyes. Will was a thirty-three year old man and he knew what I meant. So I didn't take the words back.

It was 10:30 before anyone finally gave in and left. Rupert and Alicia were first. "It's a school night," he apologized as they gathered their things. They were both teachers.

"Pansy," I joked. "You barely could make it past 10:00 when we were in college."

He balled up his used napkin and threw it across the table, hitting me squarely in the forehead. Alicia rolled her eyes and announced she'd be waiting in the car. She left without another word to anyone.

"Oh, for God's sake," Will blurted out as we watched her cross the restaurant. "She needs to get the stick out of her-."

"She's just tired. It's late," Rupert interrupted and apologized.

Will guffawed. "She's abrasive."

After they finally left, Freddie and Georgiana went to the bar to snag us one last round before 11:00. While we waited, Brodie, a friend of Freddie's, turned to us. "So Freddie said you all met in college?"

I nodded. "Yep, in 2001." I groaned as I realized how long it had been. "Good God, fifteen years."

"Has it really been that long?" Freddie asked as he and Georgiana returned carrying three beers apiece. There was a long straw in one of them. For Will, I assumed. "It's flown by."

Will eyed him skeptically. "Has it though?"

"Well, sure." Freddie said seriously. He moved the beer with the straw in it and lifted it to where Will could reach. "I mean, think of all of the great adventures we've had in the last fifteen years."

"I can think of some great disasters," I mumbled, mostly under my breath. Brodie giggled.

"Oh, oh!" Georgiana suddenly exclaimed. "Like the trip to Africa!"

I grimaced. "That one was definitely something."

"Yeah, well it was far from a disaster!" Will said defensively.

"We were stuck in Arusha for three days."

"And I got giardia." Georgiana added brightly.

"I told you that you needed to treat the water before drinking it, Georgiana."

Brodie stared at us.

"We were celebrating," Will started to explain. He engaged the joystick on his chair and turned to face Brodie. "It was the summer after we graduated college. I planned this big elaborate trip to Tanzania."

Freddie snorted. "Yeah, except that your broken Swahili landed us in Mwanza instead of Arusha."

"That's the other side of the country," Georgiana clarified in a stage whisper to Brodie.

He laughed at the punchline, and then insisted we tell the whole story, from start to finish. For the rest of the night, we outlined the whole ordeal, laughing until we were practically crying, as we each thought back to one of the best years of our lives, and no doubt, wishing we could just go back.


	2. Chapter 2

**Thank you, everybody, for the encouraging and wonderful comments. They meant a lot! I'm sorry that it has taken me so long to update this story, but in all honesty that is probably how it will go...I hope you all will continue to read (and hopefully enjoy!) though. ~hugs~  
**

 _ **June, 2005**_

"We are on the roof of the world...THE ROOF OF THE WORLD!"

Will stood at the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro, arms flung out to the sides and yelled the words at the top of his lungs. The rest of us joined in a moment later.

We'd made it.

Boy, had it been rough.

We had been in Tanzania for almost two weeks. Ten of those days had been on the mountain. The other four had been spent trying to fix a series of serious screw-ups that had almost sent us home.

When we had first arrived in the country, Will, in his infinite wisdom, immediately took charge. He herded the four of us-Rupert, Freddie, Georgiana, and myself-through the airport, found us transportation, and confidently told the driver where we were going and bragged about what we were doing. After almost twenty-four full hours of nonstop travel, the rest of us were fine with Will taking the reins. We sat back, relaxed, and tried to mentally prepare ourselves for the daunting challenge that we'd face in two days.

But then we ended up in the wrong city.

Georgiana and Rupert had wanted to call it quits as soon as our bus pulled into Mwanza and we realized our mistake. Freddie had gone off in search of an internet cafe so that he could alert our parents to what was going on. I just stood there, at a complete loss. I hadn't really wanted to come in the first place. Will had bullied me into it. I saw the mix-up as divine punishment for not listening to my gut two years ago when we'd started planning and saving for this crazy trip.

I still wasn't sure how he did it, but somehow, Will managed to get the bus driver to let us ride back with him to Karatu on his way back to Dar es Salaam. From there, we found another bus to take us the remaining two and a half hours to Arusha. In retrospect, trusting Will to get us out of the mess that he'd gotten us into probably wasn't the best idea, but it all worked out in the end. Eventually-after four full days of travel and over twenty hours on a rickety bus-we made it.

Now, here we stood: at the summit of Uhuru Peak, looking out across the Tanzanian wilderness.

What a frigging miracle.

"Where's he going now?" Freddie asked, exasperatedly, as Will walked over to one of the porters. We didn't have long to spend on the summit before we had to begin our descent back down, and we all wanted to spend it taking in the beauty. Well, that and taking a much needed break.

Will, of course, had other ideas. We heard him ask the man something in broken Swahili and then gesture toward us. The porter took the camera Will offered him, looking surprised its weight. Slowly, he and Will made their way back to us. The altitude was rough even on experienced climbers - and we were far from experienced. Although we had all been backpacking before, none of us had ever participated in an expedition of this magnitude. We were just a bunch of fresh faced postgrads who wanted to do something ballsy and memorable before we joined the ranks of the real world.

We quickly huddled together for a group picture. A split second later I was blinded by an intense camera flash that I was nowhere near ready for. "I'm going to look like such a derp in that picture," I complained.

"So, you'll look normal then?" Will teased. I stuck my tongue out at him in retaliation.

Our porter stood off to the side of our little group, reminding us that we needed to head down soon. But not one of us could bear to leave just yet. Instead, we slid our packs off and sat, basking in the accomplishment and the view. We sat in silence because there was nothing to say and nothing that needed to be said.

"So, back in fifteen years, right?" Will finally broke the silence.

Rupert merely laughed at him, shattering the magic of the moment. He stood, stretched, and meandered over to his pack and started to gear back up. He tottered over to a wooden book, pointed and yelled, "Hurry up! We've still got to sign the guestbook!" He was all business, checking the items off a to-do list and keeping us on task.

But the rest of us remained seated. Georgiana smiled softly and shrugged. "Maybe? Fifteen years is a long time. Have to see where we all are." She stood up and held her hand out to help Freddie up. Together, they walked away, leaving just Will and me. After a while, he asked the question again.

"What do you say, Clark?"

I looked out over the mountain, thinking for a long time before I answered. I didn't like to make promises I wasn't sure I could keep.

Of course, that was mostly because I tended to, as my older sister so delicately phrased it, be a flake.

 _But maybe committing to something this big will insure you stick to it, Louisa,_ I thought to myself. As the fleeting thought occurred though, I could already hear Treena laughing at me in my mind.

"Clark?"

His voice pulled me out of my own head and back to the mountain we were on. Will was still looking at me, his brown eyes boring into me. His expression was vacant; not hopeful and not disappointed either. It was all a farce. He knew exactly what my answer would be, because I had never been able to say no to him.

So slowly, and against my better judgement, I smiled. "I suppose fifteen years is enough time to recover from this initial experience, grow nostalgic, and want to come back."

He fist pumped the air in victory.

"Now that we've settled that though, we probably should start heading back down," I told him, looking over my shoulder to see that the others were already geared up and waiting on us. I made to stand up, but Will grabbed my hand and tugged me back down.

"We've got to stay just a little while longer, Lou," The way he said it was pleading, and it alarmed me. "Once we begin the descent off this summit, you know, we begin our descent into adulthood." He turned away from the summit and his eyes met mine straight on. For a moment, I swear, he looked terrified. It was like he knew something about our impending adulthood that we didn't, and it wasn't good. But then in a flash the look was gone, replaced by a sheepish grin. "I'm not sure if I'm ready for adulthood yet."

I scooted over closer to him and looped my arm through his. "Come on, adulthood is going to be great. You all have amazing jobs lined up when we get home and I'll be starting design school in August. Adulthood will be good to us, Will. I can feel it."

He still didn't look convinced, so I tried another avenue. "Come on. You're working for one of the best firms in the city. Think about it this way: finance is where the money is. So next time we start to plan this trip, you probably won't have to pinch pennies for two years." I laughed and rested my head on his shoulder. "Meanwhile, I'll probably be paying student loans off until I die."

"If you design clothes and outfits like you wore throughout college, you just might, Clark."

I slugged him in the shoulder as he laughed at his own joke. It was a real laugh, one that bubbled up from deep within and come out slowly, building and intensifying until the sound of it was so loud that it echoed. And even though it was at my expense, I joined in because it was a contagious noise; one that I loved dearly and knew I would hear less and less of in the days and months and years to come as time slowly worked its black magic on us as it does on all college friends.

We stayed like that for some time, avoiding the descent and eschewing adulthood for a little while longer, laughing and joking and scoring the moment upon our hearts forever.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: I'm terribly sorry for the prolonged absence. If anyone is still out there reading this...I hope you like this chapter, in which we learn a little bit more about our AU Lou and Will.**

When I got home around midnight that night, my parents were still awake. Mom was watching _The Late Show_ and Dad was reading a book. Even at this late hour, I could hear their old coffee pot percolating in the kitchen. It never ceased to amaze me how my parents could stay up so late, rise at the crack of dawn, and still manage to be contributing members of society. It was a talent, really.

I made a beeline for the couch and sank down onto it next to my mom. She paused the T.V. and opened her arms for a hug. I crawled into her arms and buried my head, feeling like a little girl again, rather than a thirty-two-year-old woman.

"It was hard seeing him."

It was a statement, not a question. I nodded anyways.

"Your mother was always pressuring you to date him," Dad spoke up from across the room. "Aren't you glad you never listened to her-"

"Bernard!"

"What, Josie? It's the truth, and she knows it." He fixed me with a look. "Are you feeling guilty or relieved?"

My dad had a way of getting right to the truth and being annoyingly insightful along the way. His words cut into me like daggers and tears sprang into my eyes.

Even though my head was still buried in my mom's arms, I knew what would happen next. Mom would glare at Dad, who would simply shrug and continue reading his book. Later, when they were alone, Mom would light into him for being insensitive and Dad would eventually concede that she was right. Tomorrow morning, over breakfast, he would apologize to me, but that wouldn't take away the sting of his words.

Because the fact of the matter was that he was right.

None of that would happen now, though. Mom patted my back soothingly. "Come on, let's go get a cup of coffee."

To my parents, there was no problem that couldn't be solved and no negative emotion that couldn't be made to feel better with a solid cup of coffee.

I followed her into the kitchen sullenly, knowing the coffee wouldn't help.

I spent the next three days sleeping.

Three years ago, I signed a contract with an international nonprofit that worked to survey historic churches in Europe. Sixty percent of my work days were spent traveling to and from the churches in small villages and big cities. I lived a fast life: travel, work, travel, work, sleep, work, travel. I loved traveling and I loved my work and the Europe job allowed me to combine both into one. I paid pennies for an apartment because I needed a permanent residence, but I was hardly ever there.

My penchant for travel eventually led me to a crossroads. It was a pivotal moment in my life; a choice that would change me forever. I decided on the road not often taken.

Now, six months later, I was still wondering if I made the right decision.

Especially because in the end, I would have probably found myself right where I am anyway: waking up unemployed in my childhood bedroom on a gray Sunday morning.

I had peaked. I had peaked when I had finished my doctoral program and immediately snagged the European churches job. It could only go downhill from that.

So, I did what any self-respecting thirty-two-year-old woman would do in the situation: I went back to sleep.

A shrill ringing woke me up some time later. I knocked my phone off of the nightstand while blearily trying to grab it and was surprised by the name and picture staring up at me as I picked it up off of the floor. I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and tried to catch it before it rolled to voicemail. "Will?"

"Clark," he said the words slowly, as if it hurt to talk. "Are you still coming today?"

"Oh, balls!" I exclaimed into the phone and sank back into my pillows. "I forgot I was supposed to come over today."

Will was silent, but I could practically hear him rolling his eyes.

I got out of bed and padded over to look out my window at the driveway. Both of my parents' cars were gone. "I can still come, but I'll have to wait until either Mom or Dad gets home. Oh, I could also Uber," I added as the thought occurred to me.

"Actually…are you free later in the week instead?"

I snorted. "I'm unemployed and living with my parents. I'm free literally any time of the day or night." He didn't laugh, like I expected, or even chuckle. "Will..are you okay?"

"Just a bit under the weather today."

"The weather is under the weather today," I replied as a large clap of thunder boomed, making the windows on my parent's ancient house shake. "So, it would seem that you're in good company."

"Sorry to bail on you."

"Sorry that I forgot," I laughed, trying to lighten our conversation, which felt inexplicably heavy. "Let's shoot for Saturday instead?"

"Saturday it is."

The line clicked and like that, he was gone.

Frowning, I immediately called Georgiana.

"What's wrong with Will?" I asked without any preamble when she picked up.

"Umm, I-Freddie, don't let her pull that off the table!" Georgiana's explanation was interrupted. "Good God, I swear. What is so hard about making sure that your two-year old daughter doesn't grab a thermos of hot tea off the coffee table? It's like he doesn't even care if she burns herself."

"He cares," I assured her, and tried to ignore the lump that was forming in my throat. I tried to steer us back on track. "What's wrong with Will?"

"How should I know? Call him and ask him. His number's the same as its always been."

"I know his number, Georgiana," I replied through gritted teeth. "He just called me sounding like death warmed over."

"Oh." Immediately, she softened. "Well...Lou...he's..." She sighed heavily on the other end and let her words trail off.

"It's been almost three years," I said.

"Three years isn't all that long," Georgiana reminded me. "Not to come to grips with being paralyzed from the neck down."

I hesitated. "He…he sounded like he was in pain."

"There are good days and bad days," Georgiana answered, gently, as if she were talking to her two-year old daughter and not her grown best friend. "I haven't talked to him today, but it sounds like it's just a bad one is all."

I thought back to the strain in his voice when he talked, and I hoped he usually saw more good ones than bad.

Georgiana and I talked for a little while longer and made plans to have dinner during the week. After we hung up, I finally crawled out of bed. A quick glance at the clock informed me it was already 3:00 in the afternoon. For a moment, I lingered at the edge of my bed and debated whether to crawl back in.

 _You must face the day at some point_ , I finally told myself.

So, I quickly got dressed in sweatpants and an old SCAD t-shirt, brushed my teeth, and pulled my hair into a ponytail.

But after that, I wasn't quite sure what to do.

I ended up cleaning.

I never really minded cleaning; to me, it was therapeutic. My mom, however, did not share that same opinion. She always saw cleaning as a chore, and one that was far down on the to-do list. In Mom's eyes, if there were no dishes in the sink, the blankets in the living room were folded, and the beds were made, then the house was clean.

The thick layer of dust on the Steinway in the study clearly said otherwise.

The dusting didn't take me as long as I imagined it would, so I figured that Mom must have given the house a quick once-over before I'd come home last week. Similarly, it seemed like she'd vacuumed recently too. Either her standards were changing, or Dad finally hired a cleaning lady. My money was on the latter.

In the center of my parents house was a room with a Steinway piano, two wingback chairs, and three floor to ceiling walls covered with books. We called it the study, but when you were cleaning it, it was more apt to call it a pain in the ass. There were all these knickknacks littering the two coffee tables in the room and every piece of furniture was an antique, which meant it required special treatment. Dealing with those things alone was the reason my mom hated to clean, I think.

Then there were the books themselves. They ran the gamut from trashy dime-store romance novels to five-hundred-year-old texts on alchemy. Years ago, my mom started collecting rare books-a hobby that soon morphed into an obsession, which then grew into a thriving business. These days she owned a proper, climate-controlled shop in Virginia Highlands. But she kept her favorite monographs at home, stored in archival boxes. I stayed away from those.

I couldn't stay away from the shelf underneath her stash, though. That shelf, and the one below it, held double stacked rows of photo albums. The spines were meticulously labeled. _Louisa, Preschool 1986-1987. Katrina, High School Graduation 1998. Nana and Grandpop 50th Anniversary Party/Nana 75th Bday._ Growing up, I'd loathed my mom's habit of obsessive picture, but today I was suddenly immensely grateful.

I pulled out one that was labeled _Louisa: The College Years_. It started with pictures of me moving into my first dorm at Atlanta's campus of Savannah College of Art and Design. It was only a thirty-minute commute, but my dad had insisted that, if I was going to choose a school so close to home, I move out. The room was nothing more than a closet with a lofted bed on each side. I shared it with a computer animation major with terrible acne and braces named Georgiana Jensen.

Thumbing through the album was like stepping into a time machine. There were pictures of every apartment I'd lived in during college and my seemingly endless years of graduate school. There were pictures of a really bad haircut in 2006 that I wish hadn't been immortalized, and there were pictures of all of my friends at birthday parties, holidays, and each of our college graduations.

The album ended with three pictures from when I completed my doctoral program. The first was a group picture of the gang. I was standing in the middle, with Georgiana and Freddie on my left, and Rupert and Will on my right, and we were all smiling widely. The second picture was of me, my parents and sister, and my Grandpop.

The third was one of my favorite pictures ever taken. My mom had instructed us to be "goofy." Before I could even comprehend what was happening, Will had scooped me up and tossed me - literally tossed me - through the air to Rupert who caught me in a fireman's carry. In the shot, Georgiana and Freddie's faces were frozen in shock while Will and Rupert were captured wearing wicked grins. My face was obscured by my graduation cap and my hair, but I'm sure I looked terrified. The picture didn't expressly show it, but I'd also screamed and called Will a "fucking asshole" as I flew through the air, much to my mother's horror.

I felt nostalgic as I looked at the picture. In the three years since that picture had been taken, a lot had changed. Georgiana and Freddie had gotten married exactly a month before I graduated. Ben and Alicia had broken up, gotten back together, and then supposedly broken up again for good. I rolled my eyes as I looked at Ben's crooked smile. Time would eventually prove that to be wrong. Three years ago, I was still young and naive. I hadn't even applied for the job that would take me across the world and leave me forever changed-my hand flew to my stomach for just a moment - for the better and the worse. And at the time the picture was taken Will was still standing on the roof of the world. Two days before my graduation he had been named a junior partner at his firm. Six months later he was in a bike accident that broke his neck.

I felt a sharp pang as I looked at the Will in the pictures. The thirty-year-old man in the picture practically glowed. He looked healthy and fit and he towered over me by at least six inches. I had forgotten how tall he was. The expression on his face was one of joy; it was clear that he couldn't have been more delighted for his best friend who had just been awarded an expensive piece of paper that would allow her to tack "Ph.D." onto the end of her signature.

As I scrutinized the picture, I noticed that there was something unusual about it. There was something hidden in the picture that I had never noticed before. Sticking out of the pocket of Will's slacks were the edges of two pieces of paper. I knew exactly what they were.

For weeks Will had been telling me that he wouldn't be able to attend my graduation. There was a big conference in San Francisco that he had to attend with his boss and just couldn't miss it he'd told me. I had understood; he was trying to move up the ranks at his firm and accompanying his boss to the conference could only help. But then, only a few minutes before I was set to walk across the stage and be hooded, I saw a familiar looking man sneak into the auditorium. He was holding a giant bouquet of Black Eyed Susan's and had given me a thumbs-up. Even from across the room, I could see how happy he was for me. Later, he'd presented me with two plane tickets to Alaska-those were the pieces of paper sticking out of his pocket. As a graduation gift, he had planned a backpacking trip to Glacier National Park for the two of us.

Sighing heavily, I replaced the photo album on the shelf where it belonged, in between _Thomas, Birth-First Year_ and _Louisa, Europe._ Every person in that album had changed, and it was hard to accept some of them would never again be the same.


End file.
